Is anyone else worried about Syrian shelling Turkey, and the fact that since Turkey is a NATO ally, an attack on one is an attack on all?
As in, we could find ourselves in the midst of another Middle Eastern war in a few days.
Back in 1949, Canada signed the Washington Treaty, forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. It was the alliance that has been the key foundation around which we have built our defence policy for 53 years.
NATO was formed looking at Russia as the potential bad guy. The Soviet Union blew up its first atomic bomb in 1949. The world soon became very scary. Thousands upon thousands of nuclear bombs and missiles would bring "duck and cover" to the lexicon.
Then in 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved. We no longer had a prime bad guy to worry about. But NATO has survived, and even expanded.
The key portion of the Washington Treaty was Article 5 says that an attack on a member in Europe or the Americas is an attack on them all. When Greece and Turkey joined, that was expanded to include their nations (although it didn't stop them from going to war with each other over Cyprus).
Over the past week we have had mortar bombs landing in Turkey, originating in Syria. In response, Turkey has been shelling Syria. These, for all intents and purposes, are the opening acts of a war.
In accordance with the treaty, we should consider these shells falling on border areas the same as if they were landing on North Portal.
The question is, is this the Syrian government lobbing warheads into its neighbour, or are the rebels doing it?
This is something we, and the NATO alliance, have to think seriously about before we commit forces to this powder keg.
Why would the Syrian regular army do something so stupid as to provoke its heavily armed neighbour into a shooting war? Don't they have enough problems without opening up essentially a second front? Anyone who knows anything about strategy in war knows you never, ever want two fronts if you are already on the defensive. You are almost sure to lose. This is entirely why the Allies invaded Normandy in 1944 - to split the Axis' defences.
More likely, this is an action of the rebels seeking to get others in on the fight. They know for certain that if Turkey becomes involved in a full force war the Syrian Army, already in a weakened state fighting their own countrymen, will fold like a house of cards. Turkey's military is the biggest standing army in NATO behind the United States, twice as large as that of Germany or France.
If NATO becomes involved, with its advanced air forces, the rebels know they will see another Libya. Libya was a pushover for NATO. It was so weak, the United States essentially sat that one out, and Canada's contribution was all of half a squadron of fighter-bombers. We couldn't even be bothered to send a whole squadron. That's saying something.
Syria, on the other hand, is a much more powerful foe, but it is already weakened. Canada might have to send 12 fighter-bombers instead of just seven like last time.
Going on the principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend, NATO getting involved in Syria could make for some strange bedfellows. If indeed the rebels provoked our involvement, do we really want to be helping these people? But then again, do we want Syrian dictator Assad to remain in power? Wasn't this the guy who had a nuclear complex bombed a few years ago by Israel because he wanted his own nukes, just like Iran?
Will the rebels, if and when they overthrow Assad, become our friends, or another Iran? Syria has long been an ally of Iran in exporting terrorism. Was that an Assad thing, or a Syrian thing? Will we see democracy or the Muslim Brotherhood?
There's no clear way out of this conundrum. There are no easy paths.
We may want to be careful in committing ourselves, because this would be no Afghanistan. It would be much, much worse.
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
